Data
by terrified
Summary: A one-shot. Sherlock is presented with a set of data. He is unable to deny its results and, therefore, his feelings.


_**A/N:** I was rewatching TSoT and that line "high functioning sociopath...with your number," somehow struck me. So I played around with that entire interrogation scene and turned the tables around on our favourite detective and his own blind spot ;) Hope you'll enjoy this little experiment with the scene! x_

* * *

 **Data**

"Why are we here?" asked Sherlock, irritably.

His eyes darted around the noisy cafe they were in whilst his sensitive nose was feeling most appalled by the horrible scent of cheap coffee. Mary, on the other hand, sat coolly and calmly across from him, her fingers drumming an even rhythm on the checkered table cloth.

"Does John know you're —"  
"Oh, he sent me here," interrupted Mary, "He's getting quite, _quite_ tired of this…"  
" _This_?" Sherlock asked, raising an eyebrow.

Mary chuckled as she called for the waiter. She ordered two freshly pressed juices for them, for the coffee was indeed horrible, before settling back comfortably against her chair.

"I'm waiting," asked the detective, crossing his arms and eyeing his best friend's wife warily.  
"Where do I even begin?" Mary asked in return, chuckling to herself.

The detective rolled his eyes and scoffed quietly. It bothered him that he had not the slightest clue as to why they were meeting here. Obviously, it had nothing to do with a case, Mary was not the sort to chuckle at something like that. He sighed and peeled his gloves off, resigned to a long afternoon of expensive liquidised fruit in a room filled with people and the smell of that _awful_ coffee.

"I'm all yours," said Sherlock, short of throwing his hands in the air, "What duty have you come to ask me to perform?"  
"Let's talk about Molly first," said Mary, leaning forward with a glint in her eye.  
"Sorry, what?" the detective replied, his eyes blinking a little too rapidly.  
"Oh, I think you know what…" said Mary with a laugh.

The detective scowled and seemed to sink further into his chair.

"You lived in and out of her flat for two years…" Mary began, "Her bedroom, to be more precise."  
"Why are you bringing something up from ages ago?" he replied. "Yes. Friends help one another, and she was helping me."  
"Is that a fact?" asked Mary.

Stretching her arms in front of her, Mary smirked, before she began slowly cracking her knuckles. Sherlock eyed her behaviour and wondered for a moment if she was going to punch his face, or possibly throw something at him. To his relief, she did neither. Instead, she reached into her small messenger bag and pulled out her mobile phone.

"You like information, don't you? Data and all that…" she remarked as she began scrolling through her phone.  
"They cannot be faulted." he answered, wondering where she was steering this conversation to.  
"There…the data John and I have collected," said Mary, grinning at her screen.  
"What data?" scoffed the detective.  
"You ready?" Mary asked, lifting her eyes to meet his frown.

Sherlock shrugged and took a sip of his juice. It was not as though he knew what had to be ready for anyway.

"Whenever she tweets…" Mary began, reading off her phone, "a ' 243ash' responds within _five_ minutes, regardless of time or current location…"  
"Stop exaggerating. It's isn't five min—"  
"Shush. Don't interrupt… You _abhor_ Twitter and yet, not only have you created a poorly disguised Twitter handle, this also suggests you have her on text alert."

There was a pause as Mary looked up from the phone to check for his reaction. Sherlock seemed tense, as though he were clenching his teeth, and it was just the reaction she was looking for.

"Shall I continue?" she asked, stifling another chuckle.  
"Please…" he answered, rolling his eyes again.  
"Out of all the wedding photographs you picked for John's blog and our family albums, Molly takes centre frame, whereas Tom, who was there at the time, is always partly or entirely excluded. In fact, I think you'd actually cropped him out—"  
"All right, enough," interrupted the detective, "You and John can't assume—"  
"Oh, we're not assuming, Sherlock," laughed Mary.  
"Whatever you've got…it doesn't _count_ as data—"  
"You've volunteered to step in for her shifts when things got difficult at Bart's on no less than three separate occasions," Mary read on, ignoring Sherlock, "which is basically your way of offering her a shoulder to cry on."

There was nothing left for the detective to say. Sherlock sighed and pinched his nose bridge, mainly so as to avoid Mary grinning unabashedly at him.

"Do you have anything to say in your defence?" she asked, returning her phone to her bag and taking a sip from her juice at last.  
"That because of your concealed past and our whole run-in with Magnussen, you're a liar?" Sherlock remarked, feeling momentarily sorry for having hit just a little below the belt.

Mary shook off his little jibe at her and only smiled.

"Sorry…" he muttered, "Knee jerk reaction."  
"More jerk, less knee," Mary remarked, before they both broke into grins.  
"You're still a liar. _None_ of this can be justified—"

He was interrupted by Mary chuckling as she bit on her juice straw.

"Oh, Sherlock…" she said, shaking her head.  
"What?"  
"I'm a person who sees through _your_ lies…"

He scoffed at her remark and crossed his arms.

"Still a liar,"  
"But with Molly's _new_ number…"

The detective's eyes widened.

"Impossible. What new number?" he asked, sitting up and leaning forward.

With a cheeky grin, Mary got up from her seat to leave, but not without leaving a tenner for her share of the drinks and a piece of paper with a number scribbled on it. The detective ignored the folded pound notes and reached first thing for the paper with writing on it. Within seconds, he punched the numbers into his phone and put it to his ear. When the call got through and a voice said hello, he sighed with relief and smiled.

"Molly," he said, still smiling as he gestured for the bill, "Would you like to have coffee?"

 **END**


End file.
